TRUE or FALSE: All Pentecostal trace roots to Azusa? by Dr. Vinson Synan

Pentecostalism: William Seymour

What scoffers viewed as a weird babble of tongues became a world phenomenon after his Los Angeles revival.

Vinson Synan

Of all the outstanding black American religious leaders in the twentieth century, one of the least recognized is William Seymour, the unsung pastor of the Azusa Street Mission in Los Angeles and catalyst of the worldwide Pentecostal movement. Only in the last few decades have scholars become aware of his importance, beginning perhaps with Yale University historian Sidney Ahlstrom, who said Seymour personified a black piety “which exerted its greatest direct influence on American religious history”—placing Seymour’s impact ahead of figures like W. E. B. Dubois and Martin Luther King, Jr.

William Joseph Seymour was born in Centerville, Louisiana, on May 2, 1870 to former slaves Simon and Phyllis Seymour. Raised as a Baptist, Seymour was given to dreams and visions as a youth. At age 25, he moved to Indianapolis, where he worked as a railroad porter and then waited on tables in a fashionable restaurant. Around this time, he contracted smallpox and went blind in his left eye.

In 1900 he relocated to Cincinnati, where he joined the “reformation” Church of God (headquartered in Anderson, Indiana), also known as “the Evening Light Saints.” Here he became steeped in radical Holiness theology, which taught second blessing entire sanctification (i.e., sanctification is a post-conversion experience that results in complete holiness), divine healing, premillennialism, and the promise of a worldwide Holy Spirit revival before the rapture.

In 1903 Seymour moved to Houston, Texas, in search of his family. There he joined a small Holiness church pastored by a black woman, Lucy Farrow, who soon put him touch with Charles Fox Parham. Parham was a Holiness teacher under whose ministry a student had spoken in tongues (glossolalia) two years earlier. For Parham, this was the “Bible evidence” of the baptism in the Holy Spirit. When he established a Bible school to train disciples in his “Apostolic Faith” in Houston, Farrow urged Seymour to attend.

Since Texas law forbade blacks to sit in classrooms with whites, Parham encouraged Seymour to remain in a hallway and listen to his lectures through the doorway. Here Seymour accepted Parham’s premise of a “third blessing” baptism in the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in tongues. Though Seymour had not yet personally experienced tongues, he sometimes preached this message with Parham in Houston churches.

In early 1906, Seymour was invited to help Julia Hutchins pastor a Holiness church in Los Angeles. With Parham’s support, Seymour journeyed to California, where he preached the new Pentecostal doctrine using Acts 2:4 as his text. Hutchins, however, rejected Seymour’s teaching on tongues and padlocked the door to him and his message.

Seymour was then invited to stay in the home of Richard Asberry at 214 Bonnie Brae Street, where on April 9, after a month of intense prayer and fasting, Seymour and several others spoke in tongues. Word spread quickly about the strange events on Bonnie Brae Street and drew so much attention that Seymour was forced to preach on the front porch to crowds gathered in the street. At one point, the jostling crowd grew so large the porch floor caved in.

Seymour searched Los Angeles for a suitable building. What he found was an old abandoned African Methodist Episcopal church on Azusa Street that had recently been used as a warehouse and stable. Although it was a shambles, Seymour and his small band of black washerwomen, maids, and laborers cleaned the building, set up board plank seats, and made a pulpit out of old shoebox shipping crates. Services began in mid-April in the church, which was named the “Apostolic Faith Mission.”

What happened at Azusa Street during the next three years was to change the course of church history. Although the little frame building measured only 40 by 60 feet, as many as 600 persons jammed inside while hundreds more looked in through the windows. The central attraction was tongues, with the addition of traditional black worship styles that included shouting, trances, and the holy dance. There was no order of service, since “the Holy Ghost was in control.” No offerings were taken, although a box hung on the wall proclaimed, “Settle with the Lord.” Altar workers enthusiastically prayed seekers through to the coveted tongues experience. It was a noisy place, and services lasted into the night.

Though local newspaper coverage spoke cynically about the “weird babble of tongues” of “colored mammys,” on street corners and trolley cars, the news intrigued the city. Whole congregations came en masse to Azusa Street and stayed while their former churches disappeared. Other Pentecostal centers soon sprang up around town.

Reporting on all this was Frank Bartleman, an itinerant Holiness preacher and rescue mission worker, who wrote to the Way of Faith in South Carolina that “Pentecost has come to Los Angeles, the American Jerusalem.” His reports, which were printed and reprinted in the Holiness press, spread a contagious fever of curiosity about the Azusa Street meetings all across the country.

n September, Seymour began publishing his own paper titled The Apostolic Faith. At its height, it went free to some 50,000 subscribers around the world.

Though many came to mock and scorn, many others heard messages in known earthly languages uttered by uneducated blacks and whites that convinced them of the reality of the revival. Soon whites made up the majority of members and visitors, and black hands were laid on white heads to receive the new tongues experience. Soon an avalanche of “Azusa Pilgrims” descended on the mission to receive what were thought to be “missionary tongues,” which would enable preachers to go to the far corners of the world proclaiming the gospel in languages they had never learned.

“Don’t go out of here talking about tongues; talk about Jesus.” —William Seymour

A list of Azusa pilgrims reads like a hall of fame for the new order of Pentecostal priests. From North Carolina came Gaston B. Cashwell, who later spread the Pentecostal message to the southern Holiness churches. From Memphis came Charles Mason who returned to lead the Church of God in Christ into the Pentecostal fold (now the largest black Pentecostal denomination in America). From Chicago came William Durham, who later formulated the “Finished Work” theology that gave birth to the Assemblies of God in 1914.

To Seymour, tongues was not the only message of Azusa Street: “Don’t go out of here talking about tongues: talk about Jesus,” he admonished. Another message was that of racial reconciliation. Blacks and whites worked together in apparent harmony under the direction of a black pastor, a marvel in the days of Jim Crow segregation. This led Bartleman to exult, “At Azusa Street, the color line was washed away in the Blood.” Seymour dreamed that Azusa Street was creating a new kind of church, one where a common experience in the Holy Spirit tore down old walls of racial, ethnic, and denominational differences.

Seymour’s dream was rudely shattered even before the “glory days at Old Azusa” came to an end. When his mentor Charles Parham visited Azusa Street in October of 1906, Parham was appalled at what he called “darky camp meeting stunts” and “fits and spasms of spiritualists” who invaded the meetings. Although Seymour recognized him the “projector” of the movement, the Azusa Street elders rejected Parham. For the rest of his life, Parham denounced the Azusa Street meetings as “spiritual power prostituted.”

Perhaps the most damaging challenge to Seymour came in 1909 when white female co-workers Florence Crawford and Clara Lum moved to Portland, Oregon, carrying with them the mailing list for The Apostolic Faith magazine. This cut off Seymour from his followers and effectively ended his leadership of the emerging movement.

Rumors circulated in the black community that Crawford may have left in a fit of jealousy. It was said that she had wanted to marry Seymour but was discouraged from doing so by C. H. Mason because the world was not prepared for interracial marriages. When Seymour decided to marry Jennie Moore, a black leader at Azusa Street, Crawford opposed it “because of the shortness of time before the rapture of the church.”

After the “glory years” of 1906 to 1909, the Azusa Street mission became a small black church pastored by Seymour until his death on September 28, 1922, and then by his wife, Jennie, until her death in 1936. It was later sold for unpaid taxes and demolished. Today, a Japanese Cultural Center occupies the ground. By the year 2000, the spiritual heirs of Seymour, the Pentecostals and charismatics, numbered over 500 million adherents, making it the second largest family of Christians in the world.

Today, practically all Pentecostal and charismatic movements can trace their roots directly or indirectly to the humble mission on Azusa Street and its pastor.

Vinson Synan, dean of the School of Divinity at Regent University, is author of The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition (Eerdmans, 1997).

You Are There

Excerpt from a news story by a dismayed reporter of the Los Angeles Daily Times, April 18, 1906:

An old colored exhorter [Seymour], blind in one eye, is the major-domo of the company. With his stony optic fixed on some luckless unbeliever, yells his defiance and challenges an answer. Anathemas are heaped upon him who shall dare to gainsay the utterances of the preacher. Clasped in his big fist, the colored brother holds a miniature Bible from which he reads at intervals one or two words—never more.

After an hour spent in exhortation, the brethren present are invited to join in a “meeting of prayer and testimony.” Then it is that pandemonium breaks loose, and the bounds of reason are passed by those who are “filled with the Spirit,” whatever that may be.

“You-oo-po goo-ioo-ioo come under the bloo-oo-oo-boo-ido,” shouts an old colored “mammy” in a frenzy of religious zeal. Swinging her arms wildly about her she continues with the strangest harangue ever uttered. Few of her words are intelligible, and for the most part, her testimony contains the most outrageous jumble of syllables, which are listened to with awe by the company.

162 Comments

False. There were two outpourings before Azuza Street. The first was during the 1880s or 1890s in the mountains around Murphy, N.C. that led to the formation of the Church of God denomination from Cleveland, TN. After that, there was an outpouring in the Kansas City area at a Bible college.
The roots may go back further than that, however. The Cane Creek revival in Kentucky that led to the present day Independent Christian Churches (Stone-Campbell or Restoration Movement) involved some behaviors that seem to possibly ve connected to manifestations of the Holy Spirit along with some practices that were clearly very much flesh and emotion. They play down the possibilty of it being connected with any sort of spiritual ecstatcies because their official position now is that of cessationism. That was as far back as the first decade of the 1800s.

Those are just the tip of the iceberg. There is a trail leading all the way back to the apostles and early church of believers who operated in the gifts of the spirit including the gift of tongues.
There was a group of believers during the 2nd century AD in the region of France and Spain called the Montanists, (I think that is the correct spelling) who were strong proponents of the use of the gifts of prophecy and tongues, especially through their leadership. They were all but eradicated by the Roman Catholics as heretics. The Catholics then seem to have destroyed anything that they may have written and quite possibly slandered them to justify the actions of the church.

Fr. Timothy Cremeens, PhD

The Montanists were not “eradicated” by the Roman Catholics, neither were they considered heretics BECAUSE they spoke in tongues or prophesied. Rather they were considered heretical because 1) they believed their prophetic utterances were superior to the writings of the NT, 2) they believed that Jesus would return again to Pompusa in Phrygia NOT to Jerusalem 3) that Montanus was an incarnation of the Holy Spirit and 4) when they spoke in tongues and prophesied they did so in a frenzied manner like the pagans and not like the Orthodox Catholic Church Christians who did so in a decent and orderly manner.

Gottfried Sommer believes several movements merged. There was speaking in tongues among Methodist-type movements in South America and India that started about the same time as the Azusa Street revival.

There were also some Presbyterians in England in the 1800’s. That turned into something highly liturgical, and kind of like the NAR in some ways, but with 12 Gentile so-called ‘apostles’.

You gentlemen show a genius for Pentecostal history!! I wish I were younger, I would love to study your findings and maybe work on a comprehensive manual tying them all together. The research would be a challenging and thouroughally enjoyable exercise!!!!!

Further, McGee, on page 99, citing A.J. Lewis, writes, “On one occasion, participants were ‘baptized by the Holy Spirit to one love”…and on page 32, states that famous Moravian preacher John Cennick spoke of the Spirit’s baptism “without which all other baptisms are but faint shadows” from a sermon in 1740.

“In 1722, the Moravian refugees established a new village called Herrnhut, about 2 miles from Berthelsdorf. The town initially grew steadily, but major religious disagreements emerged and by 1727 the community was divided into warring factions. Zinzendorf used a combination of feudal authority and his charismatic personality to restore a semblance of unity, then on August 13th, 1727 the community underwent a dramatic transformation when the inhabitants of Herrnhut “Learned to love one another.” following an experience which they attributed to a visitation of the Holy Spirit, similar to that recorded in the Bible on the day of Pentecost. It is said that the great revival at Herrnhut was accompanied by prophecies, visions, glossolalia (Speaking in tongues), and healings.” – Moravian Moment #129–The Moravian Pentecost http://moravians.net/joomla/about-us/34-moravian-moments/231-moravian-moment-129

Moravians were evangelical, missional and revivalists but speaking in tongues was never established. It is said that Herrnhut was accompanied glossolalia but I very strongly doubt they even connected speaking in tongues to the HSB in 1727. There is just not enough theological support for such doctrine out there for the period. If you know any others 1720s sources I wold love to examine them

It is my understanding that the outpouring at Murphy began with a group of believers seeking to be filled with the Holy Spirit with the initial evidence of speaking in tongues. The Church of God (Cleveland, Tn.) has held the position that tongues is the initial evidence from their very beginning as a denomination and they came directly from that revival.
Interesting sidebar: While most of the church goes out of its way to deny that speaking in tongues is necessary to identify the Baptism in the Holy Spirit, I know of two published New Testament scholars with Ph. D.s that have said that the sign that they were looking for in Acts 8 in Samaria was speaking in tongues. That would make it unanimous that every time there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Acts, someone spoke in tongues. And these were not Pentecostal or Charismatics, so their opinions would not be seen by the world as biased. Unfortunately, neither one was willing to make that final step in receiving the fullness of God’s blessing.

January 1, 1901– The initial phenomenon of speaking in tongues occurred at Parham’s school in Topeka, Kansas
January 6, 1900 – Frank Sanford’s Shiloh school reported that “The gift of tongues has descended”
1896 – Over 100 people baptized in the Shaerer schoolhouse revival conducted by the Christian Union in the North Carolina mountains
1887 – People falling in trances and speaking in tongues were reported at Maria Etter’s revival meetings in Indiana
1874 – Speaking in tongues occurred during healing meetings reported in New York
1873 – William H. Doughty and the Gift People of Rhode Island spoke in tongues
1854 – V. P. Simmons and Robert Boyd reported tongue speaking during Moody’s meetings

Try Edward Irving on Wikipedia first. (UK) I’m sure you could find a scholarly source over there since you probably have more access to those kinds of books where you are than where I am. I could use Google scholar, but you could do that as well.

Troy Day, Edward Irving from the 1800’s was in England. Have you read about that? The movement was called the Catholic Apostolic Church after he died? THey appointed 12 so-called ‘apostles’ who they did not replace, and the movement died out. There is a splinter group in Germany.

Stephen Williams What are the characteristics of Lucan Christology. Irving believed Christ did His miracles through the power of the Spirit rather than through His deity. He was accused of saying ‘Christ’s sinful flesh’ and he lost his ordination for the Presbyterian church over this. I think it was Drummond who asked him where his authority came to baptize after he lost his ordination (weird thinking IMO.) They ended up reorganizing under Drummond and others who they considered apostles.

After he died, the movement went really liturgical. Their aristocratic ‘apostles’ went around Europe and brought back aspects of liturgy. They divided up Europe by characteristics they thought matched tribes of Israel– strange from my perspective. They believed in apostles laying hands on people to ‘seal’ them. They’d lay hands on Anglican ministers and Roman Catholic priests to put their blessing on them. Drummond promoted the idea that apostles– himself and other– were necessary for the unity of the church. That kind of reminds me of NAR, but it was different in a lot of other ways.

When it started off, though, it seemed a bit more like a kind of Pentecostal or Charismatic movement. More Charismatic I guess since it happened in a Presbyterian church that believed in infant baptism.

Stephen Williams I agree the Gospels show that He did miracles through the power of the Spirit. I think Pentecostals have a valid point on this. I don’t know if Irving tooks his teaching a bit too far or not.

“I have had fully in my mind-namely, for preventing the church from falling into despair upon the discovery that she possesseth not the baptism with the Holy Ghost, whose standing sign, if we err not, is the speaking with tongues (Irving 28).”

Link Hudson This is old school interpretation. Have you read the many more who say old landmarkists were and are still are clueless about the Biblical HS baptism. Are you taking “standing sign” as initial evidence or you disregard the whole initial evidence doctrine? Also do you make difference between initial evidence and the gift of speaking in tongues?

Troy Day, I have not read that whole book. I was going to tell you that I read in a biography about him many years ago that he believed that tongues was the sign of being baptized with the Holy Ghost. But I decided to do a web search to see if I could find a quote instead, and I posted that. I haven’t read Irving’s book.

Fr. Timothy Cremeens, PhD

PAOC- “Azusa is not the birthplace of the PAOC! Stop perpetuating the myth. Ottawa Valley – McAlister via Horner. Montreal – Baker who came from Ottawa. Toronto – Hebden Mission and Keswick. Winnipeg – Argue, Methodists and Durham in Chicago. And the Canadian who went to Azusa was McAlister and that was after he already knew about speaking in tongues from Horner in the Ottawa Valley.” -Dr. Michael Wilkinson

Von Below (noble family in Pomerania) revival started 1820, known for singing in tongues, Lars Levi Laestadius (1830) Finnland, the Laestadius still do speak in tongues. Even in the revival lead by Paavo Ruotsasleinen, speak Ing in tongues was known.
Mukti revival in India was before Azusa Street, influenced the Chilenian revival under Hoover.

The article states “Today, practically all Pentecostal and charismatic movements can trace their roots directly or indirectly to the humble mission on Azusa Street and its pastor.” PAOC did not start until 1919 so in most probability is directly or indirectly connected right?

Stephen Williams The origin of Pentecostalism is widely considered the 1906 Azusa Street Revival in Los Angeles, California. Within months of the outbreak of revival at Azusa Street, Pentecostalism had reached Canada, and by 1910, there were Canadian Pentecostals on both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts, with sizable congregations in Toronto, Ontario, and Winnipeg, Manitoba. A majority of Pentecostals were found in the prairie provinces due in part to the large numbers of United States immigrants who brought their faith with them. Because of these influences, Canadian Pentecostals maintained close ties to their American counterparts Source: The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada”. The New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements. Rev. ed. Edited by Stanley M. Burgess and Eduard M. van der Mass. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2003

Have you read the Cambridge Companion to Pentecostalism? Have you read Anderson? The Azusa narrative became dominant not because it was THE origin of the movement but because it became the most publicized and popular centre.

Have you read the Wilkinson books? Or William Sloos’ article in Pneuma tracing the origins of the Hebden Mission back to Keswick Holiness in England. The facts are here in the North is that Pentecostalism emerged separately from Azusa. Ellen Hebden’s experience of Spirit Baptism cannot be traced to Azusa Street anymore than can Agnes Ozman’s.

Stephen Williams Guess we need to examine them when there is more time. So far the Irving, Zinzendorf and the Moravian could not be proven. I suspect the Murphy case cited by Jim Daniel is a bit shaky as well…

Further, McGee, on page 99, citing A.J. Lewis, writes, “On one occasion, participants were ‘baptized by the Holy Spirit to one love”…and on page 32, states that famous Moravian preacher John Cennick spoke of the Spirit’s baptism “without which all other baptisms are but faint shadows” from a sermon in 1740.

As asked Jim Daniel about Murphy / Monroe – no doubt they may have spoken in tongues but did they connect speaking in tongues to the baptism with the Holy Spirit. In other words did they explicitly understood and stated – we speak in tongues as initial evidence our receiving of the Holy Spirit. And even more importantly – is there an explicit documented source (not later on historical here-say) that proves both their claim and experience ????

My grandfather was exposed to Pentecostals being sent out of Houston into East Texas, as early as 1910, no doubt associated with the Charles Parham group (which had sent out Seymour to Los Angeles earlier).

Stephen Williams The main thing is still the main thing – they may have spoken in tongues but did they connect speaking in tongues to the baptism with the Holy Spirit. In other words did they explicitly understood and stated – we speak in tongues as initial evidence our receiving of the Holy Spirit. And even more importantly – is there an explicit documented source (not later on historical here-say) that proves both their claim and experience ????

Likely not, due to the fact that they were not looking for “initial evidence” for the Baptism in the Holy Spirit was were the likes of Parham. I am sure you are well aware that Palmer equated HSB with santification where as Oberlin and Keswick groups associated it with power for service. So, who was right, and how do you know you got it?
Charles Parham formulated initial evidence in the context of a “fundamentalist-like religious culture searching for rational responses” (Robeck)

One of my professors, thinks that Pentecostalism is more than a list of “ingredients” ( eg. HSB, spiritual gifts, Jesus is our Saviour, Healer etc etc) but it is how those ingredients are mixed and “baked”! In other words, when listing characteristics in front of a CMA student, the student didn’t see much difference. So, not just ingredients, but how they are baked!

Stephen Williams The only one with doctrinal affirmation baptism with Holy Spirit with evidence of tongues before Azusa (that I have found clearly documented) Frank Sanford and his Shiloh school which was visited by both Parham and AJ Tomlinson before they experienced speaking in tongues

January 6, 1900 – Frank Sanford’s Shiloh school reported that “The gift of tongues has descended”

January 1, 1901– The initial phenomenon of speaking in tongues occurred at Parham’s school in Topeka, Kansas – year later and very much copying the same style after Parham’s visit in Shiloh.

From ‘The Collected Writings of Edward Irving’
“Beyond all question …
speaking in tongues was the sign of the Holy Ghost in the person who so spake … as the tongue or word of man is the
sign of the mind within him; so, when another Spirit, the Spirit of God, enters into him, He signifieth His presence by
another tongue from that which the person himself useth.”

Troy Day This doesn’t touch on the ‘initial evidence doctrine’, but I thought you might find it interesting. The first article touches a bit on Plymouth Brethren attitudes toward ‘Pentecostalism’ and eschatology. The second article is from a critic of Irving who had been in the movement. Irving had some beliefs similar to Pentecostals, including some Holiness beliefs, but other leaders in his movement did not all agree https://biblicalstudies.org.uk/pdf/cbrfj/10_40.pdf

False. Most Pentecostals will preach the beginning there. But the Church Of God was before that. It wasn’t named Church Of God at that time. But after a while the same people and same movement came up with Church Of God. And this Name has stayed. But the Church Of God was before Azusa street revival.

Btw, a quote from Irving,
“In The Collected Writings of Edward Irving, he had written: “Beyond all question …
speaking in tongues was the sign of the Holy Ghost in the person who so spake … as the tongue or word of man is the
sign of the mind within him; so, when another Spirit, the Spirit of God, enters into him, He signifieth His presence by
another tongue from that which the person himself useth.””

A lot of the roots went through Charles Parham’s work in Houston, including William J. Seymour. My grandfather was Spirit-baptized near Livingston in 1915 when some young evangelists were sent out from Houston. He went on to plant several assemblies in Baytown and northeast of Houston. Raymond T. Richey set up his Bible school in Baytown.

Phillip Aaron Powers How so? The title comes from this statement in the article: Today, practically all Pentecostal and charismatic movements can trace their roots directly or indirectly to the humble mission on Azusa Street and its pastor.

People does Reece it Azusa St first. But it’s wrong because the Church Of God was before them. It didn’t start out with the Church Of God. But Quickly changed to the Church Of God, before Azusa St. started. Even tho it changed names at first. It still was the same Church.

What happened at Azusa Street during the next three years was to change the course of church history. Although the little frame building measured only 40 by 60 feet, as many as 600 persons jammed inside while hundreds more looked in through the windows. The central attraction was tongues, with the addition of traditional black worship styles that included shouting, trances, and the holy dance. There was no order of service, since “the Holy Ghost was in control.” No offerings were taken, although a box hung on the wall proclaimed, “Settle with the Lord.” Altar workers enthusiastically prayed seekers through to the coveted tongues experience. It was a noisy place, and services lasted into the night.

Chris Westerman you seem to suggest that engaging in a bitter ‘culture war’ in order to preserve America’s formerly dominant Christian culture has been largely a failed strategy but I will submit that you may be too late for any of that